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Thursday, September 20, 2012

Our property is ideally situated to avoid logging, development or loss of privacy. We own a mere 2.5 acres (1.0 Ha) but the surrounding crown land is heavily forested, but steep and creeky -- not suitable for logging. Above us runs the highway, and a long way down a 45- to 60-degree slope is a regional park, so no risk of anything man-made growing up in either of those directions. Which is lovely, except that it makes it almost impossible to create any trails that start at our place and connect up with anything. We're prisoners of our terrain. Our small area of more moderate grade is all we've got to work with.

So Fiona and I decided that if we can't hook into the nearby cross-country trails from our property, we could at least create some sort of interesting circuit to make use of on our bikes. We have dreams of a reticular network of tiny trails connecting obstacles, jumps, skinnies, ramps and whatever else we can dream up. Today, with Chuck's help we got started. We used two 18' cedar logs to span a small gully. Then Fiona got busy with hammer, nails and a bunch of cedar decking recycled from our old deck.

In less than an hour we had completed the bridge. Fiona got up her courage: the access at the far side comes from a short but steep slope. She made it across without any difficulty!